


trace the memory in your eyes

by kimaracretak



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Bajoran Culture, Developing Relationship, F/F, Female Friendship, Occupation of Bajor, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Referenced occupation-era and type violence, Vague handwavy au where Leeta/Rom never happened, i'm having a bajoran moment don't touch me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 15:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8923060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: (once in a lifetime / the sun goes down / protect and survive): There's rules, for what to do if you see a Resistance traitor on the estate grounds. Rules that good Bajoran girls follow if they want to keep their suppers, their jobs, their lives.Leeta has always been more scared of the rules than of what would happen if she broke them.Or; Three times Leeta and Nerys meet under Bajor's rains





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celestialskiff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/gifts).



> title + summary quote from runrig, 'protect and survive'
> 
> i was aiming for h/c and i'm uh not sure i hit it, tbh, unless you count the entire occupation as the 'hurt' portion but i hope you enjoy anyway!

_remember when you walked out into the rain;_

It doesn't rain much on Bajor. Leeta's never thought to ask why.  It's just the way of life here, same as the hiss of Cardassian consonants fleeing her lips is the way of speaking, as the crack of a ringed hand across her cheek is the way of punishment. She speaks a language that does not want to wrap around her tongue, learns to be deft and quiet, and watches as the clouds that choke the sky grow ever darker with her planet's stolen life and never give anything back.

The estate she works on is large, so vast that she doubts she could walk it all in one day, even allowing for her shortened childish steps. But she has more or less free reign over it, when she isn't working, and though she has no doubt she's being watched no matter how hidden she feels, she can't help but test the boundaries, walking further and further through the tall grasses, ever alert for a security patrol or the call to return to the house.

She spends so much time being alert that she doesn't notice the girl on the ground until she's tripped over her.

" _Oh!_ " Leeta says reflexively as she hits the dirt, but the other girl slaps her hand over Leeta's mouth, eyes dark. She shakes her head in a universal gesture of _don't_ , and Leeta realises moments too late: the girl is Resistance.

There's rules, for what to do if you see a Resistance traitor on the estate grounds. Rules that good Bajoran girls follow if they want to keep their suppers, their jobs, their lives.

Leeta has always been more scared of the rules than of what would happen if she broke them.

The girl is eyeing her warily, the hand not over Leeta's mouth clutching a disruptor rifle that's too big for her, but that the crumpled body of one of the guards next to her prove she knows how to use. Leeta stares back in silence. She should run. She should tell the girl to run.

She doesn't.

The girl's hand is freezing on Leeta's cheek, one fingertip moving in an eerily familiar pattern. Then it stops, and when Leeta still doesn't react, the girl frowns. Starts again, repeating the set of lines and curves that seem just like ... _letters._

The third time, Leeta pays better attention. _How many?_  the girl asks. _How many more?_

Leeta's brow furrows in thought, and the girl's chest heaves in silent exasperation as she gestures at the body. Oh. How many more _guards._  She holds up four fingers. Thinks a moment more, then points down at the ground. Points back towards the house and holds up five fingers, hoping the girl will understand.

 _Nine more_ , the girl's fingertip writes, and Leeta nods. _Easy,_  the fingertip writes, and Leeta's eyes widen in shock as the girl's face breaks into a smile at the same moment as the clouds that have been threatening to break all day finally do.

The rain is acidic, poisoned just like the land, and Leeta flinches in the Resistance girl's grasp. She needs to get inside. They both do, but the girl is still smiling at her, seemingly unaffected. Leeta has almost decided to try to slip away when the girl releases her.

She leans forward to press a kiss against Leeta's cheek, right where her fingertips had rested, and her mouth is warm. "Thank you," she whispers, and Leeta can barely hear her over a crack of thunder. She's gone before Leeta can do anything else, slipping through the grass like something wild. Leeta says a silent half-prayer to the Prophets she's not sure she believes in that the girl makes it out alive.

Leeta takes her time returning to the house, letting her racing heart slow down, making sure that the rain washes away any evidence of where she's been. It's worth the burning itch of the acid on her skin, coming back inside after a brief stop in the barn to check on the livestock that are her responsibility, to find that all the outdoor guards are dead.

The house is in chaos, and all the Bajorans are locked in the barren cellar for the night with no supper while the remaining guards try to figure out which of them were responsible for the security leak. This, too, Leeta thinks, is worth it.

The rain drums on the ceiling throughout the night as Leeta tries and fails to sleep. Some of the older Bajorans would tell her that the rain was the Prophets crying for their children's horror. That never explained why they cried so rarely, Leeta thought, but tonight she thinks of the Resistance girl and her disruptor, of ten bodies that can never raise a hand again, and thinks that maybe the Prophets don't cry because Bajor is fighting for herself anyway.

The next time she sees the girl, two years later, she's bloody and furious on a Cardassian _WANTED_ poster along with the rest of the Shakaar resistance cell.

Leeta rips down the poster, tears it into pieces and does not cry. There is hope, she thinks, and she will do what she can.

 

 

_a minute to keep silence;_

If Leeta's perfectly honest with herself, she doesn't understand what's so great about holosuites. She can tell others, of course; Quark's marketing speeches are easily memorised and more easily spoken. But Leeta had never needed anything so fancy to play make-believe.

Still, on the rare occasions that she can book holosuite time, it's a guaranteed quiet space, one that probably won't collapse on top of her head and one that she can come back from without getting lost in endless corridors.

She finds the Ancient Bajor programme by accident, one evening when Quark's patrons are far more interested in drowning their worries about the coming war in alcohol than in the black hole of the dabo wheel. He's figured out that she's one of his few employees who can actually tinker with the Cardassian computers without anything blowing up (well — blowing up more often than is usual for the station) and sent her off to pull some of the less popular programmes from the holosuite's main menus to make room for more lucrative ones.

Leeta hesitates only briefly before starting the programme. She hasn't finished sorting the rest of them, but she's on overtime right now anyway — knowing Quark, _unpaid_  overtime. Really, he has only himself to blame.

The forest springs to life around her, green like Leeta's never seen her world before, and the rush of emotion is wholly unexpected. She's heard the stories, of course, but they had always been distant, fairytale sketches of a world that no one living had ever seen. But now, with the trees around her and old city spires rising in the distance, that this world, this Bajor,  _had_  existed, and could exist again.

She walks out of the forest, following the thin green river until she ends up in a clearing where she can see city and forest alike. She's not entirely sure where she is — she's never had the time to connect all of her memorised place names to their _actual_  places, and this is, after all, thousands of years ago — but it's beautiful and _hers_ , and that's what matters. Leeta sits in the grass, pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin atop them, and shuts her eyes.

She jumps to her feet when the holosuite doors hiss open, apology for Quark already on her lips, and it's ... not him. Major Kira stands there instead, more uncertain than Leeta has ever seen her.

"Sorry," she says. "I hadn't thought to check if a programme was running and the doors just opened so..."

The computer wouldn't automatically lock the doors for a programme without a safety or content rating, Leeta remembers belatedly. "No, sorry, my fault. I was just sorting some of these for Quark, but I saw the title of this one and got ... distracted ..."

Kira isn't looking at her anymore, her gaze caught instead by the city. "Is that Janir?"

Leeta blushes, caught in her ignorance. "I don't know."

Kira's face isn't exactly readable when she looks back, but Leeta's not sure she likes what she _can_  see. "What, no geography books in that big house you grew up in?"

"What do you know about how I grew up?" Leeta snaps defensively. So she had had a roof over her head at all times as long has she kept her mouth shut. Didn't mean it was _nice_.

"Everything," Kira says simply. "I recognised your face as soon as you came aboard. You didn't remember me?"

Leeta shakes her head mutely. She had known the Major was a former Resistance fighter, had admired her from afar, but the more personal connection Kira was implying was lost on her.

"I memorised all the faces from the houses," Kira says thoughtfully, sitting down and patting the grass beside her. Leeta hesitates a moment before joining her on the grass. "In case you turned out to be collaborators, we could keep an eye on you. Do you really not remember? You helped me kill nine of your guards."

 _Oh._  The memories come flooding back, then: eleven years old and tripping through the grass at the edge of the estate, Kira's fingers against her mouth, Cardassian bodies charred in the acid rain, Kira's lips on her cheek, the weeks of random punishments that didn't matter because _ten Cardassians were dead._  "The day of the acid rain," she says, because that's what the day always was, in her memories.

"Yeah." Kira smiles softly, and Leeta relaxes just a bit. "You were just a kid. Hell, I was just a kid, but you did great, for an estate brat."

There's things Leeta could — _should_  — say, things like _thank you_  or maybe _it was bad for us, too_ , but they all feel unnecessary in the moment. Instead, she says, "I bet we could make it rain, now, if we wanted it to."

Kira keeps smiling, and Leeta thinks maybe this is the same as if she'd said all the other things she should have. "Computer. Rain."

The rain is clear and cold and _real_  and they're both drenched immediately, and Leeta laughs a little at how poorly they thought this through. Kira doesn't laugh though, doesn't say anything, just keeps staring at maybe-Janir in the distance like she's trying to memorise that too.

They're _okay_ , Leeta thinks, as she cedes the silence to the rain. Years later but not years too late, they've found this moment, and it's _okay._

 

 

_we wandered into the light of day;_

_After_  breaks across the galaxy like a solar storm, flickering and wavering and stretching unevenly into the corners of the galaxy the Federation forgot was touched by the war. Through it all Bajor stands tall, and Leeta welcomes the arrival of each new day with open eyes and waiting hands.

For the first time, she stands on a Bajor that is truly free. Not only free: thriving. If she stands in the middle of Jalanda City's First Avenue and shuts her eyes, Leeta thinks it could be any day on the station's Promenade.

She does so more than is probably wise, and it means she's become a quick master of the rapid sidestep and murmured  _sorry_  that take the place of the elbow to the side and _watch it, asshole_  that she used on the Promendae. It's worth it, though, to see the sky whenever she likes. Worth it, too, for the friends she's made over apologetic deka tea, the sense of community in a space that feels alien-touched but not quite _Federation_ -touched.

Three months after her move to Jalanda City Leeta feels like she knows a good deal of her neighbourhood, so she's not entirely surprised that she recognises the voice that says _sorry_  right along with her when she doesn't sidestep quite quickly enough. Still it takes a brief second for her to place it, and she's not _sure_  until she turns around.

"Ma — Colonel Kira!"

Kira looks different out of uniform, looser, like maybe the white-hot spring coiled in her chest doesn't feel so dangerous anymore. "Leeta!" she says, and the warmth in her voice is real, if tired. "I had no idea you moved back planetside."

Leeta shrugs, and resists the impulse to tug Kira under the nearest shop overhang, away from the stream of pedestrians and the threat of rain. "Three months ago. The station just felt..."

Even now, she doesn't have the words for it. Too cold? Not enough like home? Empty? It had been good, while she was there, but as the Federation kept coming and coming to rebuild its frontline base, Leeta had known where she was needed.

"I know," Kira says, and to Leeta's surprise that, too, seems genuine. "Did you know they're making us wear Starfleet uniforms now? The price I pay for staying in command." Her lips twist in a wry smile, but Leeta doesn't think either of them find it very funny at all.

"But if you're — then you —" she waves a hand vaguely at the street around them, Kira's clothes. "I have to say, I didn't expect to see you again. Not that I saw you much on the station, but since you were there and..." She trails off, aware that she's rambling.

Kira runs a tired hand through her hair. "I had meetings in Ashalla yesterday. Ezri, ah, convinced me I should take a few days while I'm down here."

"Let me guess," Leeta grins, "It was more of a counselor's order about how you've been working too hard."

"Not quite." Kira's smile softens, and it tugs at the memory in Leeta's heart of the last time a Dax had ordered Kira to relax, the two of them in the holosuite. "She told me how much I deserved it until I agreed to stay just to avoid the guilt."

Leeta can't help it, she _laughs_. It's a relief, really, to know that her friends are still looking out for each other. "Tell you what," she says impulsively. "There's a new cafe that just opened a couple blocks over. What if I bought you lunch, and you caught me up on station business?"

She can feel herself leaning forward as she speaks, seven years and more of charm hard to shake even when there's no need for it. Kira hesitates, and Leeta realises then that though her offer may have been impulsive, she really, _really_  wants to have lunch with Kira. "Please, Colonel?" she asks. "They do a really amazing sort of Andorian-Bajoran fusion. And raktajino."

It's Kira's turn to laugh. "Well, with that sort of promise, how could I say no? And, Prophet's sake, Leeta, call me Nerys. We've certainly been through enough together."

"Gladly," Leeta grins.

Talk comes easily over lunch, easier than Leeta expected, if she's being truthful. She and Nerys hadn't talked much on the station outside of their time in the underground. The one serious conversation they _did_  have hangs in the background now, and Leeta can feel it colouring everything they say.

But they talk of more inconsequential things despite that: Quark's latest scheme, how the new crew are settling in, the station temple's quiet turn to a more open faith that isn't being mirrored on the planet and what that means for the future. By the time they've split dessert, Leeta's picked up the thread of the conversation, local gossip and her studies for the local university's entrance exam.

It's raining by the time they leave the cafe, but they slip easily into the crowd still swarming the streets. It has not been so long since the rain was acid that most people have stopped treating it as a novelty. When their hands brush, Leeta feels rather like they're on a first or second date, if you discounted the part where they've already been through several kinds of hell together and survived. 

Nerys falls silent at her side, and Leeta realises with dawning horror that she must have spoken aloud. "Oh — _Prophets_ , Nerys, I didn't mean — I mean I —"

But Nerys is just staring at her with an odd, soft look, one that Leeta never imagined she'd see on her face. All she says is, "Do you want it to be?"

A few years ago Leeta would have said _yes_  unhesitatingly, back when Nerys was still just Major Kira, Resistance hero and station officer, dazzling and hard like Leeta had always wished she could be. It's not like the fantasies have ever really gone away, but ... it would be so different now. Better, maybe. "I — maybe. Yes. I think so."

"Well." Nerys reaches up and cups her cheek, like she did the very first time they met. Her fingertip writes, _we'll figure it out._

Leeta rests her head on Nerys' shoulder, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> section titles;  
> (i) delain, 'i'll reach you'  
> (ii) leaves' eyes, 'irish rain'  
> (iii) eluveitie, 'helvetios'


End file.
